Not the unique book I hoped for

Tod Wilson’s goal is to articulate the common beliefs that Christians of virtually all denominations (whether Catholic, Orthodox, or some sort of Protestant) have historically (down through the centuries until the last 50 years or so) held on the topic of sexuality (by which he primarily means sex in the sense of maleness and femaleness especially as expressed in sexual relationship). I was looking forward to this because so many books on biblical sexuality are focused almost exclusively on explaining why homosexuality is incompatible with the original teachings of the Bible rather than offering a full-orbed discussion of sexuality.

The author does a decent job of providing a fairly comprehensive overview. However, he does this with an eye constantly turned to how it relates to homosexuality and with little or no discussion of how this has played out historically in the writings/practice/etc. of the church. While I didn’t disagree with many of his conclusions, I don’t think his argumentation effectively took the issue much past basing it on biblical authority and the example of Jesus (and while I have no problem with those as bases, the author was supposedly going to distinguish his book from similar ones by going beyond that).

Overall, I think that the biggest contribution here was on the empathy of Jesus, and there are some other good points, but it really wasn’t the stand-out book I was hoping for after reading the publicity blurbs.